Why don't you come in to theliving room and wait a while?" My heart was still beating fast and I was taking deep breaths totry to calm down. Suddenly ...Laurie stopped and turned towards me. I had been walking right3behind her and had almost bumped into her, so we ended up standing almost toe to toe witheach other, her face inches from mine. As she smiled and looked into my eyes I noticed she hadgrown taller, too - by now she must've been five foot six or so. "Know where we are now?" sheasked,. She's still very fragile. And this whole rescue thing is still unreal to her. I mean, she was trapped – and I mean that pretty literally – in a Hell of a situation. Gary, at the height of her despair, you snatched her from the one kind of escape that she was able to think of. In its place, you've presented her with an unimaginable, ungraspable, way out. She's in limbo right now – she can't process what's happening."Having run out of words for the moment, I stopped talking and looked up at Gary.. ”Her defensive posture had softened into one of welcome at the sight of the Japanese whisky.Smiling, she closed the door behind me and grabbed a couple cups from off the top of her minifridge in the corner of the room.I slipped the joint into my front pocket and cracked open the bottle of Nikka.She handed me a glass. Being chivalrous, I reached the bottle towards her and poured hers first, then filled mine, set the bottle down on her nightstand.“Cheers.” I exclaimed, raising my glass and. ”“What?”“That signifies you don’t mean it.”Maggie suppressed a giggle of her own with a hand over her mouth. The two friends were polar opposites. Sue was big, bold, brassy, and busty. Maggie was slender, mousy, and smart. She helped Sue with math and shone brighter in her large shadow. Maggie was serious about the pledge of chastity. Sue? What choice did she have? Her father was the pastor of the church.“Shhh,” Maggie admonished her. They joined in reading the Bible with the young, handsome.